CHELSEA, OK -- Workers at a Chelsea pharmacy are defending the actions of an Oklahoma City pharmacist charged with first-degree murder.
Jerome Ersland shot and killed a 16-year-old who was attempting to rob his pharmacy May 19.
Employees at Chelsea Family Pharmacy faced a similar situation when they were violently attacked two years ago.
"You don't know what it's like until you've had a gun in your face," Channing Stephenson said.
In May 2007, Stephenson was working in the Chelsea pharmacy with owner Chad Jones. A gunman came in demanding prescription painkillers. Police say the two complied, but they were horribly beaten with a hammer.
http://www.newson6.com/global/story.asp?s=10450706
The pharmacist is going to have many, many supporters in this case. I haven't spoken to anyone from OK who agrees with him being charged with anything. He was still protecting himself in his mind. He had every right to do so, imo. We have laws which say you can, but I am not sure they detail when you have to stop protecting yourself.
And it is most likely incidents like this that led up to him going back and shooting the guy 5 times.
I remember a time when if your home was robbed or your plane was hijacked, you were instructed to just cooperate. That your life would be in more danger if you objected or failed to cooperate. But if you cooperated, you were more likely to live through it. And people did.
A plane would get hijacked, and the passengers would try to sit quietly, and scared to death. Because if the airline cooperated and the passengers cooperated they were likely to get a scary, long unexpected flight.... but most likely they would be returned safely. Sometimes of course a few would be killed, but on the whole the majority would make it. Same with home invasions, with store robberies and everything.
But even before 9/11 things were changing. Store robberies and home invasions were more likely to result in severe injuries or death. But authorities were still urging to cooperate. Authorities were likely to charge a home ower or store owner if they tried to protect themselves. That seems to have changed since 9/11.
It is like 9/11 opened the public and authoritative conciousness. Like people became scarder and more aware that cooperation was not a guarentee of safety. That sometimes your only chance at safety was self defense. And authorities seem to be more aware that they have to allow people to protect themselves. But still we have to draw the line somewhere.
I mean, yes let the store owner pull his weapon and shoot and shoot to kill. But like with any other situation.... when he has the situation in his control, he is the only one standing holding a weapon, he cannot then become the bully, the dangerous person who threatens others lives. If you are innocent it has to stop somewhere.
If he was doing that totally on adrenaline, then he was putting others into jepordy. What if an innocent male just happened to walk into the store just after the shooting, would he have been so jumpy that he would shoot him too... just because maybe, might be that innocent man might be involved with the robbery and coming back to get revenge?
This reminds me of a domestic situation where the wife was allegedly being regularly abused by her husband. She reportedly loved him but was scared of him. And one day he allegedly began to beat her and she said she snapped. She picked up a knife and stabbed him something like 190 times. She claimed self defense, but was convicted..... partly I think because of the number of times she stabbed him. Because once he was down, she just kept stabbing. When she got tired of stabbing him, she dragged him into the back yard and tied him up. Now that is a person who's adrenaline and fear was so high that they just kept doing it.
But this guy, he stopped after he shot the guy. He chased the other guy. Then he came back and began shooting again. That isn't fear. If he was afraid he either wouldn't have left the one he shot for fear he would get up and attack someone else, or he would have fled and not came back until the cops came.
